Understanding Art: Hidden Lives of Masterpieces

A different perspective on art history is provided in this five-part series made for French television by filmmakers Juliette Garcias and Stan Neumann, which concentrates on the so-called “study days” at the Louvre, when paintings of a single artist are collected and removed from their frames to be studied more closely by specialists from around the globe. Thanks to the cameras that prowl the hallways catching fragments of conversation, we overhear different viewpoints about particular works, especially concerning attribution, which is often a contentious subject. Along the way, much attention is given to how the artists worked and how their paintings have survived over time—often clipped to fit frames, reworked by those who thought they were making improvements, or restored in ways that often don't maintain fidelity to the original. Clever animation is employed to make the concepts discussed by scholars accessible to lay viewers. Four of the episodes—on Raphael, Rembrandt, Watteau, and Leonardo da Vinci—were filmed at the Louvre, while the fifth, on the 17th-century French painter Poussin, was shot in Lyon and concentrates on the single work The Flight into Egypt, which was recently rediscovered and became the focus of a lengthy court case over ownership that concluded in a highly debatable judicial decision. DVD extras include text artist bios, and an informative booklet. A fascinating series, told in an engaging fly-on-the-wall style that makes a fairly recondite subject intelligible to non-experts, this is highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)